


if all is enough

by youcouldmakealife



Series: if all is enough [12]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 20:11:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4800695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rousseau looks up, then, and in some starry-eyed romance this is where their eyes would meet and all was forgiven, some bullshit like that, but instead Rousseau catches his eye, for a moment, then looks back down at the notes in front of him, face that straight mask that Ulf fucking loathes. </p>
<p>Ulf thinks maybe that’s his cue to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if all is enough

Ulf brings the bag of Rousseau’s stuff, as promised, to the airport, since he’s flying with the team. His role on the team may be purely decorative at the moment, but it’s not like it costs them more than a hotel room and a per diem to bring him along, as the seat is on a private jet, and the seat for the game is up with management. All he has to do is wear a nice suit and nod seriously whenever the president or general manager talks to him, and even more seriously when they get a visit from the owner, which tends to just be when they’re playing the home games, and also means the GM and president are nodding right along with Ulf. It’s a small price to pay for going along -- if it’s his last season he wants to be there for it, on the ice or no. 

It’s astounding how much shit gets amassed over a few months of fairly regular fucking. He doesn’t remember that happening before, but then, things with Carson generally occurred in a shared hotel room, and Dan had a hotel room to go to at the end of the night when he was visiting, while Ulf had the same when the situation was reversed. But there’s the aftershave, the gel, the coat, a moderately expensive bottle of wine Rousseau brought over that they never got to drinking. Ulf could likely keep it with a clear conscience, considering the implication of the act of bringing it over, but he chooses to put it in the bag. Sense of honor or pettiness: he’d claim the former but he knows it’s likely the latter. At least his pettiness hadn’t pushed him to putting the toothbrush in there -- it went in the trash instead, bright red staring at him in the bathroom every morning until he grabbed his trash can and threw it all down the chute in the hall.

Ulf didn’t go to the last practice in New York, had an appointment with the team doctor. He just made disappointed but unsurprised noises at Ulf in the end, and Ulf in turn felt disappointed but unsurprised. When he ducks down to the visitor’s room after warm ups he isn’t really sure what tack Travis will be taking, considering they’re about to face a team he led a year ago, a team he knows intimately. Ulf’s not a pessimist, so he wasn’t really expecting what he does find.

It’s technically a good thing to be facing the Penguins. Travis knows their quirks, as does Rousseau, and that doesn’t go the other way, because Travis isn’t rigidly sticking to the game plan he had with the Penguins, so they have a wealth of information on the opponent. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the Penguins have been tearing it up yet again, and Travis looks more stressed than Ulf’s ever seen him. If Travis is stressed, Rousseau’s a mess. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, it isn’t like the room’s catching the systematic nervous breakdown of their coaching staff. Or if they are, they’re only seeing Travis’, not Rousseau’s, because it’s hard to read a face that seems like it was made for poker. It’s not Rousseau’s face that’s the tell, just proximity, and no one on the roster’s been getting that but Ulf, so hopefully they retain a little hope.

Rousseau looks like he’s about to march to his grave, face ashen. It’s not like the odds to face Pittsburgh were high, all season, but once they entered the playoffs the odds were obviously higher. They couldn’t have been unprepared, especially Rousseau, who’s the strategist. He knew what the exact odds were. Ulf would stake his salary on it. Even so, it seems to have taken them by surprise.

Travis is trying to do the ‘rah rah’ speech he nailed before the Lightning, sketching out weaknesses Ulf knows he must have gone over in the previous practices, because with the exception of trades and call-ups, Travis knows the weak spots of every player on that roster. It’s still lackluster enough that Ulf’s aware of the hollowness, and he isn’t the only one, Garza frowning in his booth, a few of the other vets exchanging glances. The kids seem oblivious, at least, but it’s not a promising start. 

If this were a novel, this is where dramatic irony would set in. Ulf looks around the room, at Garza’s frown, at the pinch of Travis’ brow, at the tight line of Rousseau’s jaw, the line of his throat, bobbing when he swallows, at the way he holds himself, almost delicate, it’s so forced. They’re fucked, it’s the writing on the wall.

Ulf’s always loved the trope of dramatic irony, the heavy set of foreboding, but this time he so badly wants to be mistaken.

He isn’t.

It takes seven games for the Penguins to knock them down, but they do it. After the game Travis is silent, uncharacteristically so, always so quick to praise if they win, rally if they lose. He’s quiet so long Garza looks like he’s about to step in, make the obligatory speech if Travis isn’t going to.

Ulf’s watching Travis’ face, the frozen, almost mortified expression, because he has no interest in looking at Rousseau, seeing what he’d find there. He honestly doesn’t know whether utter heartbreak or that same poker face would be worse.

“You all played well,” Travis says, and he sounds like he’s choking on it. Thankfully, Garza seems to drop whatever hesitation he’d been holding on to, and takes over for him, delivers a ‘we did our best’ end of season speech Ulf’s heard too many times, but at least Garza’s doing better than Travis was. 

He keeps an attentive face on, focuses on Garza only. Idly wonders, again, if Garza’s going to book it next year, hoping for a Cup before he retires. He supposes it won’t make much of a difference, since he’s not liable to be there himself. 

Garza keeps it short and sweet, and then everyone’s left to their self-pity, some of them clustering together to share it, other guys with body language that screams that if someone talks to them they’re going to lose it. Ulf just feels distant from it. Maybe he wouldn’t have, if he’d been on the ice when the door snapped shut on him. Probably wouldn’t have, though there’s no way to be sure. 

*

Ulf’s back for locker clean out, though all of the essentials from his had already been grabbed weeks ago. The media isn’t too interested in speaking to him, for obvious reasons, since most of the questions are about their failure to beat the Penguins, though he does get a softball, “Think you’ll be a Ranger next year?”

“If they’ll have me,” Ulf says with a laugh and with the knowledge that they probably won’t. 

Besides Garza, who will probably be getting the same question as Ulf did, but with a lot more anxiety attached, Travis is the main event, and for him there’s a press conference, rather than the loose interviews Ulf and a lot of the others have gotten. Ulf’s finished for the day, but a lot of the other guys are still waiting to recite their soundbites, and some of them hang in the back of the room and wait for Travis to be done.

He’s got his assistants up with him, and in most situations they’d just be decoration, moral support, but Rousseau’s history with Pittsburgh was recent enough that he’s getting questions too, since more than half that roster is made up of former teammates. Questions he looks startled at, then resigned to, answering in that slow, careful voice, albeit with a little less swearing than is typical.

“He talks like such a fucking hick,” Anderson says to Wilson, low. “Betcha he — ”

“Watch your fucking mouth before I shut it for you,” Ulf says, just as quiet. “Show some respect.”

“Whoa, okay,” Anderson says. “Didn’t realise you lost your sense of humor, Larsson. You sound like fucking Garza.”

There are worse people to be compared to, especially because when you’re dealing with arrogant shits like Anderson, threats of violence seem to be the only thing liable to work.

Travis steers them away from Rousseau, takes the flak back on himself, and Ulf pushes off the wall. Rousseau looks up, then, and in some starry-eyed romance this is where their eyes would meet and all was forgiven, some bullshit like that, but instead Rousseau catches his eye, for a moment, then looks back down at the notes in front of him, face that straight mask that Ulf fucking loathes. 

Ulf thinks maybe that’s his cue to go.

*

Ulf should head home around now. His mother’s been on him since he ‘injured himself’, in her words, like he was a clumsy child. Usually he looks forward to returning to Sweden for the summer. It’s familiar, and has the ephemeral attachment of ‘home’. But this year he’s reluctant. 

Maybe it’s because when he looks around his apartment, he’s not sure how likely it is he’ll be able to hold onto it. Ulf isn’t poor, by any means, he has a fairly substantial savings. He didn’t spend money frivolously like a lot of his colleagues, but nor is he making eight figures like some of them, not even seven figures, for the last few years, and New York’s a more expensive city to live comfortably in than, say, Sunrise was. He can’t afford this place for long, if he’s making AHL salary, and his savings definitely aren’t enough to retire indefinitely on. 

Ulf laughs a little at the idea of getting a job, a day job, a regular person job, when he’s so unqualified for anything that doesn’t have to do with hockey. His resume would either be blank after his education — and he doesn’t think a high school degree in a foreign country counts for all that much -- or a copy of his playing record.

Or maybe the reluctance is based on the fact that he expects if he’s playing with anyone, next year, it will be the Hartford Wolf Pack, an idea that makes his skin crawl. That Stockholm is home, but that the feeling has become detached from, well, a _feeling_ , more an idea of what home should be, rather than a sense of relief, since he’s been in North America almost twenty years. That he often expects a sense of relief that never arrives. 

It lacks the ‘je ne sais quoi’ (he hears it in Marc’s rough, Quebecois patois, which he’s given to understand is the plummiest thing Quebec has to offer), that he feels in New York, the bustle, the thrum, and he doesn’t want to leave that behind. Still, he starts packing, with the efficiency of routine. Doesn’t book his flight yet, but at least he’s making some effort to tie up the season.

Marc’s still in the thick of his own season, the Canadiens facing Pittsburgh in the Eastern Conference Final, but he derails Ulf’s halfhearted closure with a call. “Come up,” he says, and when Ulf points out Marc’s currently in Pittsburgh, “Come up anyway.” Ulf does, catches a flight up to Montreal between game one and two of the series. His mother’s understanding — she likes Marc, from the times she’s met him, and Ulf’s underlined the ‘Uncle Ulf’ thing, managing not to shudder at the alliteration or the thought, enough that she gets nostalgic about children at that age, says she’s glad he won’t miss it, though he honestly hopes no one’s handing Charlotte off to him.

Montreal dropped the first game, though Marc swore to ‘revenge your loss’, though it wasn’t Ulf’s loss, really, he didn’t even step on the ice for it, and besides, Ulf knows Marc, kid just wants another pretty ring on his finger before he retires.

He refuses Dan’s offer to pick him up from the airport, figures he’s got his hands full, and he’s right, because when he gets in, Dan’s in the kitchen, trying and failing to feed Charlotte baby food, or at least that’s what Ulf assumes, since she’s got a ton of it on her face.

Charlotte’s sitting up, face — under all that gunk — starting to resemble a person’s. Marc’s face specifically, rather than a grumpy old man’s — not to say that Marc isn’t one. Cantankerous, to be sure. Dan does, at least, wipe her face off before he offers her to Ulf, who takes her gingerly.

“Well, you have your father’s stare down,” Ulf says, when she blinks at him with serious blue eyes, looking faintly cranky, like she’s not sure why he’s holding her. That makes two of them. Ulf’s slightly more comfortable with her now that he can’t accidentally touch her head and murder her, or whatever it is all the warnings are about, but he suspects he won’t truly be until she’s an adult, or at least a teenager. Hopefully she gets some of Marc’s interests, so they have something to talk about.

He vaguely wonders where he’ll be, then, whether it will be New York, or Stockholm, or somewhere altogether different. No doubt he’ll be in touch with Marc. Marc makes his friendships for life, and Ulf hasn’t even played on a team with him in fifteen years, but for some reason he’s holding a nine month old.

She blinks at him again, then yawns in his face. “And his manners,” Ulf says.

“I know,” Dan says. “It’s like there are two Marcs, judging me. I’m afraid what’s going to happen when she starts talking.”

“Better learn French now before they team up on you in it,” Ulf says.

“Oh fuck,” Dan moans. “Who let me marry a Frenchie.”

“Like anyone could have stopped you idiots,” Ulf says. “Also, are you allowed to swear in front of the baby?”

Dan gives him the finger.

She starts drooping a little in Ulf’s arms, getting strangely heavy, and Dan gingerly takes her. “She didn’t have a nap today,” he says. “And last night was kind of a mess.”

“Were you waiting on me or something?” Ulf asks.

“No, she was just being…her,” Dan says. “Let me put her down? I don’t think her schedule could get any more messed up right now. Maybe she’ll even sleep through the night.”

“Want dinner?” Dan asks when he comes back down after twenty minutes, after looking at the time and swearing. “I — shit, did I have lunch?”

“I’ll make something,” Ulf says. He is well aware of Dan’s cooking skills, or lack thereof.

“No,” Dan says, getting up from the chair he landed on, exhausted looking, when he came back down, “I’m sure I can —”

Ulf gently pushes him back into his chair. “I am making something edible for dinner,” he says. “Be excited. I know it’s rare.”

“I could have gotten better,” Dan mumbles half-heartedly, but first off, he isn’t really putting up much of a fight, and also Marc would have called Ulf crying tears of joy if that was the case. Ulf roots around the kitchen and puts together a simple pasta and sauce with chicken. He bets Dan’s been living on take-out and toast since Charlotte’s been born. At least Marc has catering when he’s away.

Dan compliments the food at least three times, which confirms Ulf’s theory that he’s been eating like shit. After dinner Dan puts an uncorked bottle of wine — nice stuff, undoubtedly Marc’s pick — and an empty glass beside Ulf’s elbow. “Boss’s orders,” he says. “Cure for a broken heart.”

“I don’t have a broken heart,” Ulf says, then, “what would Marc know of broken hearts anyway, he had a baby with his first love.”

Said baby starts crying.

Dan smiles, crooked. “Gotta go, boss calls,” he says. 

“So Charlotte offered me the wine?” Ulf asks.

“I have two bosses,” Dan says, “I’m used to it. I was prepared, anyway, Marc’s bossy enough.”

Ulf laughs.

“Enjoy your broken heart wine,” Dan adds, shooting a grin at Ulf, before he goes upstairs.

“You’re an ass, Riley,” Ulf calls after him, reminded, by that grin, how he could have been head over heels with him in the first place. Maybe Marc’s right. Ulf could use the win. Wine. Freudian slips before he even starts drinking is not exactly an endorsement for wine, but he pours himself a glass anyway.

Charlotte goes back down easy, something Ulf figures isn’t common from the look of utter relief on Dan’s face when he returns. The Pittsburgh-Montreal game is starting up, so they head to the den, turn it on, watching in companionable silence as Marc and the Habs get their asses beat.

“I hate Pittsburgh,” Dan mutters. “I swear to god, they’ve been dogging me my entire career.”

Ulf looks over at him.

“You can hate them too,” Dan allows generously. “You have more recent wounds.”

Ulf doesn’t know why, but when he thinks of Pittsburgh he doesn’t think of losses, not even the most recent one, the one that froze Travis and Rousseau flat with humiliation. He thinks, instead, of a game, maybe a couple years before Rousseau retired. Ulf had been spouting shit, the same kind he usually did, probably. Asked Rousseau what he was doing after. Called him Adam. Remembers that, if nothing else of what he said. Remembers watching, fascinated, the way even the tips of Rousseau’s ears were blushing, flushed dark red. How he hadn’t known, at the time, that the blush would crawl down Rousseau’s chest, but he could have guessed. Doesn’t know why he remembers, except maybe Rousseau always was his favorite to tease.

“You know me, Dan,” Ulf says. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

“Yeah, you’re acceptable at it, I guess,” Dan says, and laughs when Ulf shoves him, light. “Want some more broken heart wine?” 

“Stop calling it that,” Ulf says, but he isn’t saying no.

**Author's Note:**

> That's all, folks!


End file.
